lunes, 24 de septiembre de 2012

New grammar that I've learned


I still remember the first time we covered FANBOYS in class. I was just starting my second year at university when my grammar teacher explained to me and my classmates this new acronym. He started by telling us the following: “just join the first letter of each word I am going to write on the board.” He wrote down: FOR (reason), AND (conjunction), NOR (negation), BUT (contrast), OR (disjunction), YET (unexpected outcome), and SO (result). Then, he asked us about the relationship between these new items. Most of them were familiar to me. I had been using some of them for quite long time, but I never realized their function within a sentence. What is the purpose of using coordinating conjunctions? Well, obviously the words “coordinating” and “conjunction” help me to develop an explanation. These are “connecting words” that connect (I know it sounds repetitive) two ideas as one in a single sentence. However, if you missed the comma before each of these items you will be in presence of a run-on sentence. So, if you are connecting two ideas using conjunctions, be careful, and do not forget the comma!
I had so much fun in class last week. It is the first time I am involved in that kind of activity in which creativity was the protagonist while learning grammar. We were given several words to create original, meaningful, and different sentences. What do I mean by ‘different’? As we already discussed in class there are different types of sentences which are S-VI (Subject-Verb Intransitive), S-V-O (subject-verb-object), AND S-LV-SC (Subject-Linking Verb- Subject Complement). When it comes to create sentences within a paragraph, I am not always aware of the different function that a word has. I used to put attention only to the different kind of verbs within a sentence (intransitive, transitive, and linking verbs), but now I am more aware of other components such as nouns, adverbs, and adjectives.



1 comentario:

  1. thanks for the new information--about the meaning of each of the coordinating conjunctions. Not sure why you have HOWEVER in bold, though. Maybe because I had that on the board, meaning THOUGH?

    Also, no comma after SO...only before it when conjoining 2+ sentences

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